Ideas

Can I just make a quick point, to acknowledge one simple point of view I've come to learn? And for those who might be wondering, this is not in consideration of any particular person or conversation with which I've been involved. Just something on the tip of my brain's tongue. Or something.

Ideas, like talk, are cheap.

Writers with a block will disagree, searching with desperation in a barren mental wasteland. People who have taken good ideas and seen them through with effort and discipline will also be quick with valid examples disproving my point. To all of you, I say: "You're right, that's great, now shut up, because I'm not talking about you."

I'm talking about people who only have ideas; those who have small, flickering Christmas tree light bulbs go off above their heads about departments, processes and topics about which they have little or no knowledge nor regular participation. In short, people who have no business contributing their stupid, poorly-considered ideas to people who have legitimate abilities to act upon it. People who storm in filled with pride in their pseudo-creation, drop it on the floor like a cat with a mangled, still-kicking bird, and then flitter away as if they've got to get back to Heaven following delivery of their generous gift from the Gods, only to sulk and return after a period of time to wonder indignantly why someone didn't pick up their crusty little contribution and make something out of it, or if someone did, why it was managed so badly.

By the way, I'm dead certain that I've been this person, but I'm sufficiently horrified at my own conduct, and I'm still learning. Perhaps I'm speaking to myself in the recent past, as much as anything else.

Back to my main point: ideas are the easy part. They are a miracle in the same way birth is a miracle - yeah, the process is really exciting, but the product of said miracle had very little to do with its own creation, and was largely due to the efforts of others. The distinction is that it's the shepherding of an idea from its inception through the process by which it is made truly useful is the hard, fascinating part that is really laudable.

I've been lucky enough to benefit from not only the brilliance of others' ambitious ideas, but also the affection of their owners that brought them to share with me. Again, this post is not a rebuke of them.

I'm just saying that if you are a person blessed with an idea and you inflict it upon someone unbidden, if you did nothing to help further that idea, and further that if you feel a pissy contempt for those who did not embrace your idea and take it to the heights of success you envisioned, you've gone seriously wrong somewhere.

I, uh, I guess that's all I had to say about that.

The Expert Swimmer

My wife is a very smart woman, and she made an observation recently that struck me.

I have now amassed at least half a dozen books devoted to outdoor survival and backwoods living because it fascinates me. I've read almost all of them cover-to-cover. My wife noted offhandishly to a telephone chatter what I was reading about, but: "...he doesn't really do all this survival stuff - he just reads about it."

I know she meant absolutely nothing negative by it, although I think I did wince when I overheard it. It did cleave neatly the reality of what I do from the fuzzy, rose-colored jumble that dominates my frontal lobe, and how I use that wonderful rosy jumble to lie to myself. The books make it easy - since I've tried to buy quality resources, most of them have very well-written explanations and clear diagrams, and those help me fool myself into thinking that simply reading them is quite enough. Yes, that's totally sufficient, now crack a beer and turn on "Survivorman," and turn up the heat, for god's sake.

I read all these books about how things work, and they're very procedural. They're about things that someone must do before they can be appreciated, or really even be fully taught. It's like reading about swimming without getting in the water. I read and read and imagine myself doing these things - building a shelter or a figure-four deadfall trap, or even simply camping - but I so-rarely do them.

In my defense, they are things that require a commitment of time and preparation. Maybe you can slip into your backyard and put together a survival shelter from nothing in an hour, but it takes me longer. Me, I haven't got that worked out yet. Although sometimes I'll take a folding knife and build the occasional campfire in the fire pit off the side of my house (which I'm still thrilled to have), it usually doesn't go beyond that.

What I really need to do is spend about five or six hours working out some of the procedures and techniques in these things. I've practiced some of them (camp cooking, deadfall traps), and they really are a lot of fun. It just takes a departure from the norm, a bump out of the comfort zone, and god knows I'm a creature of habit.

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is that I should get off my ass, actively pursue more of the things I want to pursue, and break out of my comfortable routine. And continue to listen to my wife, who is brilliant.

Obama-thon

It's near the end of a workday whose radioplay has been thoroughly dominated by the inauguration of Barack Obama. A black man is president, and it's truly historical. I should be thinking big thoughts, swept away with a national sense of self-congratulation like everyone else.

Instead, I can relate these very human reflections: First, I honestly didn't think that the American people had it in them to vote in a black president (nor did I think a woman had a beggar's chance, either). It doesn't trouble me to tell you that I told my brother during the Democratic primary that the because the Dems were saddled with either a minority or a woman that the Republicans were a shoo-in, even if they had to prop up John McCain's lifeless corpse and operate his acceptance speech through a complicated clockwork of fishing line and pulleys. I just didn't believe the country was there yet. So, it turns out I am pleasantly surprised that my dark cynicism was proven wrong. Good for us.

Unfortunately, although there are reasons to like and vote for Obama, I think the country is settling for a cosmetic (skin-deep, if you will) revolution over the pragmatic resolution it really needs. It sounds like only a narrow portion of Ron Paul's arm-waving, near-frantic advice against striding the globe as a lone superpower will be implemented in the Obama administration,. I am glad we'll be changing course, but it doesn't take a genius or a revolutionary to realize that we were screwing the pooch in Iraq; our recent success with the "surge" only indicates we're screwing it in finer form, not that it's any better a goal. But I am heartened and confident that Obama's will be closer to a correct path than either Bush has or McCain would have provided. As far as Paul's similar admonitions against writing checks on accounts you don't have, it looks like we'll be blowing past ever-increasing limits with the stimulus and job creation being promised.

What do I know? Maybe pouring oceans of money after the problem will make things all right. It does me no good to look over the shoulders of wizards working with alchemies I don't understand. The best I can hope for is to be a well-meaning heckler.

Regarding self-congratulation, one minor note: how can you slap yourself on the back with such gusto, as if you were with him from his very birth, when your airy mind wasn't made up until a mere several days before election day? It's fair-weather fan syndrome, carried to the extreme. Sorry - just thinking of one person I know; I digress.

Much less significantly, anytime something is over-hyped I am overcome with an irresistible desire to flinch away, and it is no different with Archangel Obama, whose wings will surely tatter and fray soon enough, and who will be found to be human just like the rest of us. I'd just as soon have the marching bands vanish, and my radio shows back where they belong.